Lessons on Partisanship In Gallipolis

Published 4:00 am, Tuesday, November 7, 2000

2000-11-07 04:00:00 PDT Gallipolis, Ohio -- MIKE HARRINGTON at the Republican headquarters and Terry Haner at the Democratic headquarters tell one of those stories you wish defined the way American politics is practiced.

Picture, first, the scene in this postcard- pretty Ohio River town just across from West Virginia. The two party storefronts are six doors from each other on Second Street, staring out at an impeccably maintained local park and, beyond it, the river.

Business isn't particularly brisk at either headquarters because both have gotten most of their leaflets and yard signs out already. The most popular posters in these parts don't tout a presidential candidate. County races take up most of the lawn space.

What Harrington and Haner both talk about is the time this fall when a Republican was desperate to get through to his party's headquarters, to no avail. In frustration, he finally called the Democratic headquarters and left a message. Haner says the Democrats tried to be good neighbors, and Harrington agrees. "They brought a note down here," Harrington recalls with a smile, "and said, 'Would you please call this guy back?' "

Local politics are like that across the country -- fierce competition tempered with a spirit of neighborliness. Richard Moore, president of the City Commission, gives his staunchly Republican view of the election over lunch and then walks his visitor across the town square to Central Supply. He wants Dorothy Chestnut, the proprietor and a longtime Democratic activist, to have her say, too. People here know they'll have to live with each other the day after the votes are counted.

You get a good sense of how different national politics is by examining the reaction to the last-minute leak of George W. Bush's DUI arrest.

Republicans were very unhappy that this story broke at the last moment. Who can blame them? Bush's success in beating his drinking problem won admiration all around. If he had disclosed this episode long ago, it would never have been an issue.

But, without evidence, some of Bush's supporters immediately charged Al Gore's campaign with leaking this news for nefarious purposes. Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said the disclosure (of, it should be noted, entirely accurate information) looked like a "dirty trick." What's strange here is not Republican rage, but the fact that this is the same party that hailed any disclosure of negative information about President Clinton as the work of heroic whistle-blowers.

In an able defense of Bush, Rep. David Dreier, R-Covina, quoted Clinton's favorite line about "the politics of personal destruction." Well, yes, there's a problem here. But why is this kind of politics OK when it involves Clinton or Gore, but simply awful when it involves Bush?

The Dallas Morning News reported that when Bush was struck from a jury convened in 1996 in Austin to hear a drunken- driving case, he was asked by journalists if he had ever been arrested for drunken driving. "I do not have a perfect record as a youth," Bush replied. "When I was young, I did a lot of foolish things. But I will tell you this, I urge people not to drink and drive. It's an important message for all people to hear."

There is not a single untruth in this answer. But do you doubt that if Clinton had said exactly the same slightly evasive thing, his response would have been immediately dubbed "Clintonian"?

The point here is not to denounce Bush. It's to suggest that the poison let loose in American politics by the anti-Clinton wars will not be washed out of the system just because Clinton is leaving office.

There's a better way to be partisan. Harrington and Haner have fundamentally different views of what's right and what matters. But they don't hate each other or refuse to pass on phone messages.

Our current approach to politics is giving us the worst of all worlds. Candidates blur differences by fashioning their statements to conform with the polls and focus groups. They play down their party affiliation and pretend they'll be the souls of "bipartisanship." Then they try to turn their opponents into moral lepers. The alternative is more open partisanship that encourages honest disagreement without casting all who have different views as the embodiments of evil. It works here. Might it work in Washington?